Think Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and think Nighthawks, Early Sunday Morning, New York Movie — all masterpieces that have transcended the realm of fine art and seeped into the popular culture. These and so much more can be found in an illuminating show at the Whitney, which focuses on this 20th century American artist’s drawings — the studies that preceded, and served as a walk-up to, his iconic oil paintings.

Hopper’s widow (and frequent model) Josephine Nivison Hopper bequeathed some 2,500 drawings to the Whitney in 1970. More than two hundred are on display in the current show, billed as the first major museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s drawings. They flank the paintings, and they illustrate the creative process.

Hopper worked out themes in black chalk, and he saved everything, rarely selling or exhibiting his works on paper. He referred back to the drawings when he wanted to tackle a favorite motif — a road, a bedroom, an urban street, building or architectural detail.

A student at the New York School of Art from 1900 to 1906, Hopper trained with American realist painter Robert Henri and studied alongside George Bellows and Rockwell Kent, the latter dubbing him “the John Singer Sargent” of the class because of his obvious skills as a draftsman.

He spent the early part of his career working as a commercial illustrator, a profession that he loathed. He wanted to draw what he wanted to draw and didn’t like having the subject dictated to him. But sales of his paintings — especially those from a 1924 watercolor show at the Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries — eventually led to financial security, and he was able to devote himself entirely to his art (that is, the art that he wanted to pursue) in the mid-1920s.

After three trips to Paris between 1907 and 1910 to paint the café culture and the river Seine, Hopper took a studio in Greenwich Village at 3 Washington Square North, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life (he also kept a studio in Truro, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts). He drew inspiration for his urban landscapes from the streets and architecture of New York City, which he prowled from his home base in the Village.

He was especially intrigued by Greenwich Avenue, a street a few blocks from Washington Square that sliced through the city’s grid in a diagonal direction, thereby forming triangular wedges with its streets. The buildings situated on these wedges (and the Flatiron Building some ten blocks north) parallel the shape and form of the diner in Nighthawks (1942), probably Hopper’s most famous work, on loan here from The Art Institute of Chicago.

The Whitney Museum's curators did some important archival research and pinpointed the specific downtown New York locales that inspired not just Nighthawks but also Early Sunday Morning (1930) — a depiction of a low-rise, two-story red brick building on a commercial stretch on 7th Avenue, between 15th and 16th streets, long since demolished.